America's Deconstruction of the Middle East: from Bush’s Iraq to Obama’s Egypt

“Neither Israel, nor any of the mainstream Arab governments accept the Obama-Panetta proposition that time will magically temper the extremism of the Islamist regimes.”

Whenever US Middle East policy fails the administration in power turns on Israel as ready scapegoat. This occurred in the 1980’s when Irangate, the Reagan administration criminal involvement in drug trafficking, gun-running and money laundering began appearing in the press. And if the president eventually apologized to the Jewish state, in the end his administration deftly redirected attention away from their criminality to Israel and her spy Jonathan Pollard. And when Bush’s confident victory proclamation proved premature administration insiders sought to shift blame for the war onto Israel (actually Israel, Egypt and the Saudis strongly advised againstthe war!).

Enter my vote for America’s alternative to dirty and confused politics, Barak Obama. In style and apparent philosophy Obama appeared and may well be the opposite of his predecessor. But if the recent resignations of his two key Middle East advisers George Mitchell and Dennis Ross are an indication such qualities can also produce ideological rigidity, an inability to recognize and respond to situations that may not fit preconceptions. And that certainly seems to explain President Obama’s inability to grasp the complexities of the Middle East over the past two-plus years in office. And Obama, like earlier administrations: when failure looms, blame Israel.

Although Obama cannot be personally blamed for the regional disaster represented by the invasion and withdrawal from Iraq (Bush decisions set both in motion) Obama has followed Bush in shying away from directly confronting the consequences of the invasion. Having deposed the Sunni Baath regime and replaced it with one headed by Iraq’s Shiites Bush redefined the balance of power in the region from the Arabs to the Persians. Shiite Iraq was transformed from bitter enemy to potential ally and satellite of Iran

Saddam Hussein being pulled from his hideaway in Operation Red Dawn, 13 December 2003, (Wikipedia).

Bush replaced Donald Rumsfeld with Robert Gates as secretary of defense. An outspoken opponent of even the threat of force against Iran, if Bush wanted to avoid confronting Iran he could have chosen no better replacement. When Obama succeeded Bush he retained Gates at defense, a clear statement of his own intentions regarding the Islamic Republic. And when Gates retired Obama replaced him with his apparent clone, Leon Panetta. Both defense secretaries and their chairmen of the US Joint Chiefs strongly supported the Bush/Obama policy of Appeasement (what better descriptive of Obama’s carrot-stick-retreat approach to Iran’s nuclear weapons program?). Obama became Ahmadinejad’s unwitting “straight-man,” something of a joke on the Arab street, and the US was losing face and credibility at an accelerating pace with regional friend and foe alike.

While Obama inherited the chronic failure of an elusive and unlikely Arab-Israel peace from a long line of predecessors; while he inherited Iraq and even the policy of Iranian Appeasement from George W. Bush, when it comes to Egypt and Libya and the much Obama-vaunted “Arab Spring” it takes little special insight or knowledge to appreciate that these are Obama’s contribution to an ongoing American retreat not only from Iraq, but as regional hegemon and protector of Middle Eastern oil.

Obama’s commitment to peace between Israel and the Palestinians was laudable, but even here his rigid “idealism” resulted only in an even deeper chasm between the sides. Obama’s idealistic commitment to regional “democracy” is again worth as an ideal, but as policy a disaster. His decision to back the Tahrir Square demonstrators and force Mubarak from office is, as a regional misstep, on par with Bush’s invasion of Iraq in terms of impact on America’s credibility in the region. And when, days before Egyptian elections and the expected landslide victory of Egypt’s Islamists Obama told the military the time arrived to turn over governance to “civilian rule.”

Mubarak on trial, (Reuters).

Iran has always represented the primary threat to America’s regional interests. The Iranian threat also represents a rare common concern uniting Israel and the Arab states. Following Obama’s actions in deposing Mubarak the Saudis were so incensed as to refuse even to take Obama’s phone calls. The refused even to allow visits from high level US diplomats. So mistrustful of their previous protector they entered into a secret agreement to purchase and house nuclear weapons in Pakistan, announced their intention to build their own atom bomb. None of these outcomes would have resulted had US policy makers been objective in viewing events on the ground, of setting ideology aside as determinant of America’s foreign policy objectives.

Three days ago, and for the second time in just over a week, Obama’s military spokesman Panetta, disowning the devastation of a US policy gone wild and following a well-established precedent laid responsibility for American failure on its always available patsy, Israel.

“Unfortunately,” said Panetta, “over the past year, we’ve seen Israel’s isolation from its traditional security partners in the region grow, and the pursuit of a comprehensive Middle East peace has effectively been put on hold.” The “traditional partners” referred to are Turkey and Egypt, but Turkey’s regional realignment was itself a much earlier result of US weakness regarding Iran, and began long before the provocation of Mavi Marmara. And as for Egypt, the current state of relations between the two countries is again the direct outcome of misguided US policy, in this instance Obama’s decision to promote Egyptian Islamists over America’s reliable and long-time ally, President Mubarak. US policy towards Libya, Yemen, Bahrain…, all consistent with an ideology of Democracy. In an ironic twist of “the War against Islamist Terrorism” America now promotes Islamist rule from the Maghreb to the Arabian Peninsula. In fact American aid to the Islamists has a long history, the Mujahedeen of Afghanistan, including Osama bin Laden, and the 1979 Khomeini revolution in Iran.

“Neither Israel, nor any of the mainstream Arab governments accept the Obama-Panetta proposition that time will magically temper the extremism of the Islamist regimes [those beneficiaries of America’s dedication to “democracy”] They have before them the example of a former Democratic president, Jimmy Carter, who made the same argument 32 years ago for the West to dump the shah and welcome Khomeini's ayatollah regime.”

Had America, starting with Bush in 2003, dedicated a fraction of its military expenditure on wars in Iraq and Libya on America’s principal adversary, Russia-sponsored Iran, had Bush taken seriously the  combined advice of Egypt, Jordan, Israel and the Saudis regarding Iran the region might be less “democratic today. But hundreds of thousands of Arabs who died in those adventures would be alive today; tens of thousands of US servicemen would not have lost life or limb lives in a failed Iraqi vanity conflict; more than a trillion dollars (the actual cost of borrowed money needed to fund the Iraq war) would not today be hanging over the US economy as debt and interest. And certainly the price of oil would be a fraction of its present cost, and if the global recession were not averted at least it would have been minimized. But most importantly for the future of the region and a West threatened by Islamist terrorism, had the US taken on Iran before the costs of such an operation spiraled out of control the threat of a nuclear arms race in one of the most volatile places on the planet would have been averted.

And Israel today would not find herself threatened both by America-created instability in Arab states near and far, and by her policy-challenged senior partner in their “special relationship,” the true creator of Israel’s isolation.  

The Republican Debate: Why the Missing Middle East?

Saturday Nov 19, 2011

Beyond pledging “support” for Israel, and pledging to end the Iranian bomb project by force, the Republican aspirants to replace Obama avoided discussing the Middle East. Not a particularly strong suit for the Democrat. Why the hesitation?

In his 13 November column on Jerusalem Post Shmuel Rosner observed that, minus a few desultory comments the Republican contenders for their party’s nomination paid almost no attention to the region in their recent “foreign policy” debate. On the surface this might be surprising considering the vulnerability of the president in this area, at least among the Jewish community. So how explain the avoidance of the issue by the Republicans who, by tradition, consider themselves the party of an activist foreign policy? Perhaps the reason is less to be found in the vulnerability of the Democrat incumbent than in the record of his predecessor George W. Bush. 

The Oval Office, Wikipedia

On 20 March, 2003, Bush committed the full power of the United States military to the invasion of Iraq. Whatever motivated the invasion, whether "oil" or those absent weapons of mass destruction (WMD), whether it was his desire to promote “democracy” in the Arab world as he later claimed; whatever History eventually defines as the actual motive what Bush did achieve was an “unintended” and unanticipated outcome by fulfilling Iran’s wildest dream. In the 1980’s Iran-Iraq war Iran suffered more than a million casualties, and failed to defeat Iraq. By his invasion Bush transformed Iraq from a barrier to Iranian ambitions across the Gulf to a potential satellite of the Islamic Republic. He replaced Iraq’s Sunni regime with one dominated by Iraq’s Shi’ites, closely related by religion and culture to Iraq’s neighbor to the east. No longer a barrier, Bush provided the Islamic Republic with a superhighway into the heart of those coveted Saudi oil fields.

Prior to the invasion Iran had been an important source of “intelligence” to the Bush administration regarding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Ahmadinejad even provided the White House a paid agent to substantiate the disinformation. Ahmed Chalabi was a close and trusted advisor to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the darling of Bush neocons.

Boots on the ground our forces found themselves targeted by Iran-financed, trained and Revolutionary Guards-led insurgents. To date nearly 5,000 troops died, victim to progressively more sophisticated Iranian roadside bombs. That the Iranians were behind the insurgency was known to our generals from the start. But due to, “fears that taking too active a role against Iran and its assets will put U.S. military personnel at risk of Iranian retaliation in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the administration chose to remain silent in word and deed. This policy of appeasement would extend also to Iran’s nuclear arms program. In effect, Bush encouraged by neglect the development of the Iranian bomb.

But the disaster represented by Bush’s Middle East foray extends farther than the region itself. Invading Iraq also created threat and uncertainty to Middle East oil resulting in a dramatic rise in the cost of oil. Bush chose to fund the war “off the books: “This was the first time in American history that the government cut taxes as it went to war (the same tax cuts for the wealthy the center of controversy today). The result: a war completely funded by borrowing. U.S. debt soared… As a result of two costly wars funded by debt, our fiscal house was in dismal shape even before the financial crisis.”

           

On assuming office President Obama asked the chief architects of Bush’s hand’s off Iran policy to remain on the job. So avoiding the confrontation is at least a bi-partisan policy. But the fact remains that the Republicans are not only in bed with Democrats regarding Iran, but are the actual architects of the policy. That nearly all debaters were on board regarding a new and “tough” Iran policy, implying a change from Obama, Rosner offers the following caution: “As reassuring as this might sound, I should remind the readers that Democratic candidates made similar – and in some cases even more forceful – statements before the 2008 elections.  

With this as background it is perhaps more understandable why the Republicans all but avoided discussing the Middle East. The chaos of the region was initiated by a Republican president. Under Obama things have gotten a lot worse, but it was the Bush who created the conditions for the disaster.

111119 - Israel F15I’s refueling, (photo by Reuters)

As regards Israel’s role in this faintness-of-heart US approach to Iran, the last time I was in Israel shop after shop displayed the same tee-shirt inscription, “Don’t worry, America, Israel has your back!” In this instance the United States, beyond administration protests to the opposite, has set Israel up as its patsy, to initiate the attack and take the fall for those consequences our latest SecDef advocate-of-hesitation, Leon Panetta, parroting his predecessor: 1. “it could have a serious impact on U.S. forces in the region,” and; 2. “there are going to be economic consequences to that, that could impact not just on our economy but the world economy.” And if Israel initiates the attack Israel and not its “ally,’ the American regional hegemon, then Israel, rather than the United States, will alone face the repercussions of a world sunk even deeper into economic misery.

But implicit in these warnings by Panetta/Gates is that somehow, 1. American forces in the region have been relegated to the role of passive reassurance to our friends and allies, not combatants, and; 2. that those “economic consequences,” grown only more severe by administration neglect and the passage of time, outweigh the consequences of a nuclear Iran and the likelihood of a regional nuclear arms race. And the more states in this unstable region possessing that weapon, the more likely Islamist terrorists will also go nuclear. And while Israel is at the forefront of counter-terrorism, the most likely targets for nuclear terror are Rome, Madrid, London and, yes, New York. And this is the ultimate, to borrow that over-worn Gates/Mullen dictum, the real “unintended consequence” of America’s policy of avoidance initiated by President Bush. 

Topical writings from 2007 on the Bush Administration:

1. Is Israel’s trust in Bush warranted?

2. Nuclear Iran and the US-Israel “special relationship”

3. Bush, Condi and the Decline of US Diplomacy: Annapolis, 2007

4. George Bush and the Diplomacy of Inadvertence

5. Israel’s “special relationship,” Reality or Myth?